Community and Solitude: New Essays on Johnson's Circle

by Anthony W Lee (Editor), John Radner (Contribution by), Christine Jackson-Holzberg (Contribution by), James J. Caudle (Contribution by), James E May (Contribution by)

Overview

Samuel Johnson’s life was situated within a rich social and intellectual community of friendships—and antagonisms. Community and Solitude is a collection of ten essays that explore relationships between Johnson and several of his main contemporaries—including James Boswell, Edmund Burke, Frances Burney, Robert Chambers, Oliver Goldsmith, Bennet Langton, Arthur Murphy, Richard Savage, Anna Seward, and Thomas Warton—and analyzes some of the literary productions emanating from the pressures within those relationships. In their detailed and careful examination of particular works situated within complex social and personal contexts, the essays in this volume offer a “thick” and illuminating description of Johnson’s world that also engages with larger cultural and aesthetic issues, such as intertextuality, literary celebrity, narrative, the nature of criticism, race, slavery, and sensibility.

Contributors: Christopher Catanese, James Caudle, Marilyn Francus, Christine Jackson-Holzberg, Claudia Thomas Kairoff, Elizabeth Lambert, Anthony W. Lee, James E. May, John Radner, and Lance Wilcox.

Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781684480227
Publisher:	Bucknell University Press
Publication date:	04/22/2019
Series:	Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650-1850
Pages:	270
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	16 Years

About the Author

Anthony W. Lee’s research interests center upon Samuel Johnson and his circle, mentoring, and intertexuality. He has published three books and more than thirty essays on Johnson and eighteenth-century literature and culture. He has two books forthcoming, Revaluation: New Essays on Samuel Johnson (with the University of Delaware Press, 2018) and “Modernity Johnson”: Samuel Johnson Among the Modernists (Clemson University Press, 2019).Anthony has taught at a number of colleges and universities, including the University of Arkansas, Arkansas Tech University, Kentucky Wesleyan College, the University of the District of Columbia, and the University of Maryland University College, where he also served as Director of the English and Humanities Program.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations ix

Introduction Anthony W. Lee 1

Part 1 Personal Relationships: Letters and Conversation

1 Connecting with Three "Young Dogs": Johnson's Early Letters to Robert Chambers, Bennet Langton, and James Boswell John Radner 9

2 James Elphinston and Samuel Johnson: Contact, Irritations, and an 'Argonautic" Letter Christine Jackson-Holzberg 31

3 The Case of the Missing Hottentot: John Dun's Conversation with Samuel Johnson in Tour to the Hebrides as Reported by Boswell and Dun James J. Caudle 53

Part 2 Literary Relationships: Major Texts and Topics

4 Oliver Goldsmith's Revisions to The Traveller James E. May 79

5 "Down with Her, Burney!": Johnson, Burney, and the Politics of Literary Celebrity Marilyn Francus 108

6 In the First Circle: The Four Narrators of the Life of Savage Lance Wilcox 132

7 "Under the Shade of Exalted Merit": Arthur Murphy's A Poetical Epistle to Mr. Samuel Johnson, A.M. Anthony W. Lee 153

8 Johnson, Burke, Boswell, and the Slavery Debate Elizabeth Lambert 167

9 Samuel Johnson and Anna Seward: Solitude and Sensibility Claudia Thomas Kairoff 191

10 Johnson, Warton, and the Popular Reader Christopher Catanese 214

Acknowledgments 233

Bibliography 235

About the Contributors 249

Index 253

Editorial Reviews

"The book uses...discussions to provide an engaging illustration of time, place, and character for a wide audience. For scholars who know Boswell’s biography and eighteenth-century London well, the book offers primarily a useful synthesis of biographies and cultural history."

Eighteenth-Century Fiction

"This collection of ten essays begins with three solid essays, all making good use of correspondence."

Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer

"As a monograph designed for considering the historical interconnectedness in readings of literature, history, and culture, Community and Solitude, part of Bucknell University Press's Transits series, accomplishes its goal with welcome fidelity."

The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats

"Lee, as editor, sets out to counterbalance Johnson’s need for solitude to accomplish his literary works with his at times almost desperate search for company to alleviate his periods of despair and disillusion. How could someone with such a sociable character and love of conversation succeed in creating such a corpus of work that within its pages we can find epithets suitable for most occasions in life?"

The New Rambler

"An invaluable, erudite, thoughtful and thought-provoking contribution to the study of Samuel Johnson's life, philosophy, and literary work, Community and Solitude: New Essays on Johnson's Circle is an extraordinary body of informative and deftly scripted scholarship."

Midwest Book Review

"The scholarship is of a consistently high level, and the prose is clear and well edited. Community and Solitude provides a salutary reminder that authorship is not always the solitary activity that many people assume. Recommend." 

Choice

"This volume of essays advances the field not only because it focuses on a new topic but also because of the patient and imaginative analysis in the various essays. The audience here extends beyond Johnsonians because so many other figures of interest are included, from Frances Burney, Burke, Warton, Seward, and Arthur Murphy to Goldsmith and of course Boswell."

University of South Carolina - Steven Lynn

"These essays, well presented in this volume by Bucknell University Press, bring context, color, and an array of information that should prove of value to students and scholars of Johnson’s expansive circle."

Eighteenth-Century Studies